Clay Shirky explains LJ wank
Apr. 9th, 2008 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mymatedave10So last night I finished reading Clay Shirky's book 'Here Comes Every Body' and it was a thoroughly good read, I highly recommend it for those of you interested in the effects social software has on the world.
One thing that I thought was especially appropriate for posting in LJ was what happened when people on Digg started to post the digital keys to unlock DVDs. Digg was asked by the manufactures to remove this information and when they did, the community went mad.
It wasn't the fact that Digg was complying by the law that upset the users, it was the demonstration that the users are inherently powerless against the actual owners of the site, and that they broke the implicit bargain which said that "we are all equals" even if it wasn't an explicit one.
By acting in a way that forced the users to realise the owners broke the trust that allowed Digg to become the giant it is today, what happened next was a form of social disobedience in which everybody started repetively posting the keys so that they appeared in the top 5 spot. Digg backed down, saying,
"you'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and won't delete any more posts, and we'll deal with the consequences later. If we lose, than we died trying."
When LJ started deleting interests and LJ accounts, the fact that some of the interests were about porn was irrelevent, they broke the implicit social contract that brought people to Livejournal, and the owners didn't understand that LJ or fandom at large was a very loose *community*, not a collection of individual journals.
To demonstrate our anger, we responded in an act of social disobedience. Angry posts, rants, no posting on a certain day, etc. Because fandom is only one part of Livejournal, this unfortunately didn't have any effect on the owners but then again, the very idea that a commercial firm could be held to account uses was extremely uncommon, but it happened on Digg, and thanks to similar platforms allow non hierachical organising, it's easier now than ever before.
*****
Damn, now I'm late for work.
One thing that I thought was especially appropriate for posting in LJ was what happened when people on Digg started to post the digital keys to unlock DVDs. Digg was asked by the manufactures to remove this information and when they did, the community went mad.
It wasn't the fact that Digg was complying by the law that upset the users, it was the demonstration that the users are inherently powerless against the actual owners of the site, and that they broke the implicit bargain which said that "we are all equals" even if it wasn't an explicit one.
By acting in a way that forced the users to realise the owners broke the trust that allowed Digg to become the giant it is today, what happened next was a form of social disobedience in which everybody started repetively posting the keys so that they appeared in the top 5 spot. Digg backed down, saying,
"you'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and won't delete any more posts, and we'll deal with the consequences later. If we lose, than we died trying."
When LJ started deleting interests and LJ accounts, the fact that some of the interests were about porn was irrelevent, they broke the implicit social contract that brought people to Livejournal, and the owners didn't understand that LJ or fandom at large was a very loose *community*, not a collection of individual journals.
To demonstrate our anger, we responded in an act of social disobedience. Angry posts, rants, no posting on a certain day, etc. Because fandom is only one part of Livejournal, this unfortunately didn't have any effect on the owners but then again, the very idea that a commercial firm could be held to account uses was extremely uncommon, but it happened on Digg, and thanks to similar platforms allow non hierachical organising, it's easier now than ever before.
*****
Damn, now I'm late for work.
